Category: Uncategorized

Have you seen this ad lately?

It features my Dad, Tom Stuart, and the company I work for, Art Instruction Schools.

Check out my YouTube Channel Art Instruction Schools

We have all the old ads up on YouTube.

Here’s the 30 second spot

My heart goes out to my fellow Minnesotans and any one directly effected by this horrific collapse of the almost 2,000 foot bridge that I have travelled many times, which collapse on August 2nd, 2007 around 6pm.

I was in NYC at the time when I recieved the first phone call, asking if I knew where someone was and that the bridge had collapsed. I quickly tried to reach out to anyone I knew that might have been effected. Everyone so far that I have had contact with was not involved.

My thanks goes out to all that got a hold of me to find out if I was ok. Moments like these remind you of how precious family and friends are. My heart sinks thinking of what those people went through, falling 64ft in som places, plunging into the Mississippi river and having to escape.

So far, from news reports I am completely surprised and pleased that so few people lost their lives, but can’t help but feel an overwelming sense of fustration that those that have lost their lives or injured have suffered at the hands of a completely unpredictable event. Things like this hits you so hard, since you can’t really blame anyone. It just happened, there was nothing anyone could have done to prevent it.

Sure there were signs it was deteriorating, maybe a design flaw in the lack of redundancy, but there was nothing, no warning signs to the impending collapse, nor was there anyway to have stopped it.

Hopefully the recovery process will happen with record speed and a new bridge will be put in its place in amazing speed. The collapse of the bridge has divided a major highway but in this tragedy, connected “Minnesota Nice” with the world. I am amazed at the first responders / heros that sprung to action to save all the people they could. My hat is off to all those who helped in the rescue and recovery process.

I think we all now drive over bridges a bit differently after what has occured. Hopefully we can learn from this event and fix those bridges that have the signs the i35w bridge did and prevent this from ever happening again.

Skateboarder does 720 and then falls 50 feet

His shoes actually fell off!

Nancy (my wife) tried to find a goldendoodle on puppyfind.com and emailed one that was apparently in MN. She got an email back from a yahoo.com account and said that they had one that went to a pastor. He needed to give the puppy back because he had to go on a mission to Africa. Gave his email (an aol.com account) and said to contact him. He responded and said he is looking for a good christian home and $400 to cover shipping. He had brought the dog with him to Africa since he couldn’t find anyone to take care of the dog.

So Nancy tells me all this, and I’m really excited because finding a good dog is tough. Except for the Africa part. I was talking to her on the way home from work and asked her to do a google search for Africa puppy scam and guess what, a ton of results of people being scammed out of lots of money. I get home and trace the emails and they both came from the same IP address in Africa. So I called the police and filed a report but that was ultimately useless. Contacted the news media to see if they are interested in the story, but I doubt it.

I’m going to assume that the email addresses are throw aways. But be careful out there.

Please spread the word so people don’t get taken by this new version of the 508 scam.

Rules for buying a Pet online:
1. Never buy online (ok that may not be a reality)
2. Ask to see the puppy in person (even though you may not be able to, test their answer, if they answer no visits, walk away)
3, Ask for photos of the puppy with your name or a pop can of your choice in the picture (so you know that the puppy actually exists)
4. Never send money via western union or money order. It is impossible to get back. Use paypal or a credit card or a check you can cancel.
5. Do research online, do google searchs, visit their website, search on their names, look for feedback
6. Ask for references of other pet owners from the breeder.

Well, I joined Facebook to see what all the buzz was about. Found a lot of old friends (ok, my friends aren’t old, just didn’t find a lot of new friends)

I really like the interface, it is vastly better then myspace. Less clutter, more web 2.0 AJAX stuff.

Still not sold on the whole concepts of social networking, but maybe Facebook will change my mind. I am sick of the spam on myspace.

Time will tell, but if you are on Facebook, feel free to add me as a friend. Not sure how you do that, but once I figure it out, I’ll let you know.

Happy late 4th of July. Hopefully everyone had a great time.

It was a nice day off for me in the middle of the week. Played my first round of golf this year with my parents and go rained on for a bit but other then that it was fun.

Was up north today at my nephew Mike’s graduation party. It is almost 100 degrees today with humidity in the high 70% which is freaking hot!

Meanwhile, work is going well, about to launch thebureau-online.com soon for our business to business customers as a storefront and job management portal for our printing division www.thebureau.com.

Trying to find alternative ways to advertise and generate leads online. Click fraud is rampant and is a plague on cick through advertising. Looking at non-traditional forms of advertising but hard to get a pulse on the return rate on investment. The reality is sometimes you just have to roll the dice and risk a few bucks to make some money. Eventually, if you play your cards right, you win. If you don’t play or hold on to the chips, you never win anything.

Anyway, have a great July, it will be over before you know it.

Its a cool phone, actually got to touch and play with one today for 15 secs. But, in my opinion not worth the price. There are no discounts at all, at least according to the person I spoke with today.

It is $500 for the 4 gig and $600 for the 8gig plus a $55-100 / month contract depending on minutes. It requires a data plan and is sim locked to only AT&T. You have to sign up for a 2 year contract.

Also, no removable battery. Advertised battery life is 8 hours of talk time and 250 hours of standby, but realistically normal use means having to charge it up at least once a day and heavy use will require multiple charges throughout the day. Users will have to tell me if that is true or not.

Web browsing is cool on it, best browser on a phone for sure. Video is great, audio is great.

But, you can’t download music to it directly, you have to sync it with your computer. In fact you have to install iTunes to even activate the phone.

You can’t install 3rd party applications on it, but there will be a lot of web based iPhone specific mini-apps for it.

It is really thin, but wide and larger then I expected. It is very smooth and my fingerprints were all over it quickly.

My final opinion on it is that I’d wait for the next version. It is a cool phone / handheld computer, but the limitations and price just don’t warrant a purchase. Plus being locked into AT&T for 2 years and costing almost $2500 over that period, there are much cheaper options to tide you over till the iPhone 2.0 comes out (at Apple’s pace, heck that could be by Christmas).

Dang spell check doesn’t correct demstiffy to Demystify, but google does. Go figure. Wonder what demstiffy is, sounds political?

As a beta user of VMWare Fusion on my mac, and a former Parallels user, I can’t wait to play with Unity in the upcoming release or next beta of VMWare Fusion.

Check out the video

http://blogs.vmware.com/vmtn/2007/06/coherence_meet_.html

Ok, a bit late to the game, but what the heck was CBS thinking canceling Jericho? Sure the show wasn’t moving fast or dealt with anything remotely related to CSI but come on… Nutz!

The show was a good show, not a great show, but good and good enough to stay on for at least one more season to wrap things up. Too many things were left wide open without any resolution.

I am simply amazed that CBS doesn’t truly understand what a good show is. It is too bad, but a reminder that shows shouldn’t leave the fans in the lurch without a contract to produce next years episodes.